till the end
by VickyVicarious
Summary: There is a girl, Lucy. She is blonde and busty and fond of short skirts, and pouts a lot, and isn't dating him. She laughs like summertime. There's a rock on her finger worth more than his life will ever be. - AU Loke/Lucy -


Title comes from 'White Houses' by Vanessa Carlton. My current song of choice, and loosely the inspiration for this fic.

* * *

_love, or something, ignites in my veins_  
_and I pray it never fades  
_-White Houses, Vanessa Carlton

-xxx-

He has eleven girlfriends at any given time. They all know about each other, and are willing to share – because he's persuasive and they're not really that invested anyway. At least six of them have more than one boyfriend of their own. They are typically quite fond of makeup and short skirts, and they like to pout a lot and dye their hair blonde, and when they kiss him their mouths taste smooth and fake from lipstick, an oily sensation that doesn't fade for a long time after.

There is a twelfth girl, Lucy. She is blonde and busty and fond of short skirts, and pouts a lot, and isn't dating him. She laughs like summertime. Her eyes are blue and innocent and she thinks his dating habits are disgusting, and leans into his side, smiling with her eyes closed, and falls asleep like that while he watches her and ignores his quietly buzzing phone. They stay that way for hours. She is his oldest friend. There's a rock on her finger worth more than his life will ever be.

She steals his sunglasses one day and they cover half her face. She's grinning. Loke watches and waits for a chance to take them back, but it never comes so he tells her she can keep them. She tries to return them then, but he reminds her he has several spares so it's fine. Her smile slowly fades, and her fingers slide across the lens over her eyes.

"That's right," she says slowly. "I forgot."

Loke smiles hard to make up for her slight frown. "You never know when you might need one."

He never sees her wearing the sunglasses again.

-xxx-

He visits her one night in her bedroom, climbing up the terrace to her unlocked window and pushing it open. She likes to lean out and count the stars. Usually she would be doing that right now, but she had a talk with her father today and she's sobbing into her pillow. Loke climbs onto the bed behind her and wraps his arms around her. She turns seamlessly to sob into his chest instead, and he rests his cheek on her head and stays there until his shirt is soaked through and his arm is numb from her weight and Lucy's eyes are dry and the stars are shining brighter than the moon.

"Thank you," she says.

Loke shrugs, but doesn't say anything. Lucy sighs softly, her breath puffing gently against his collarbone, and she is warm against him and her hair is softer than silk. He sighs too. He sometimes wants to ask her if this is worth it, but he's a little afraid of her reply. She has run away before and left him behind. She wrote him a postcard and told him where to find her, and he had been the one to tell her father where she was. It's hard to explain why. He was angry.

Now the ring on her finger gleams in the dark and he can't pry his eyes away, but if she left again she wouldn't tell him where to find her. And she's squirming even closer and whispering to him everything her father said in a very small, emotionless voice, and her closet is full of dresses that are the height of elegance and cover her all the way down to her ankles.

Loke closes his eyes and listens in silence.

-xxx-

Her legs are long and pale and exposed for the world to see, the dress ripped roughly high across her thighs. Diamonds dangle from her ears and pearls glitter in her hair, long white gloves on her arms and her lips painted a dark pink. She's smiling, eyes bright with triumph. Loke excuses himself from his date and leaves the restaurant to join her. She laughs and loops her arm through his. Her joy is infectious, and he follows where she leads.

They go to a park and when he sits on a swing she sits down on his lap. Someone's gone all-out with her makeup. She's facing him and the world is dark, the sun dying and the stars already starting to glow, and her long, smooth legs grip around his own and her hands clench tight on his shoulders as he pushes them into the air.

Lucy laughs, and so does he, and eventually a limo arrives to take her back home. He only remembers then what the party was for this time, and wishes he hadn't.

"What's he like?" he asks.

Lucy's smile doesn't dim. "Very, very rich. Of course."

She gets off his lap, the chain links of the swing clinking, her ankles wobbling as the heels of her shoes sink down into the dirt. Loke smiles back very gently. "What an excellent match."

Her snort ruins all the elegance she's got going, but she gains it back the next moment, when she leans forward and uses one hand to hold his head still by grabbing his hair. Her other hand grips the chain of the swing, just above his own. Lucy dips her head and grazes her lips across his cheekbone. The limo honks.

She pulls back. "He's not as handsome as you," she says with a wink, and then turns and leaves. He watches her go and waits until the limo is long gone before reaching up to touch his cheek.

Her lipstick left a streak of wax against his skin, smooth and cool and dark pink.

It burns.

-xxx-

She was the first girl he'd ever kissed, but they were so young it didn't count. They had been playing house; he was the househusband carefully baking mud pies in the sun, and Lucy was the adventurer Amazon Queen wife who brought home trophies and gold and vassals in maid uniforms carrying an array of snacks. They ate them while they let the mud pies bake into hard clay under the summer heat, and Loke kissed Lucy while the maids weren't looking because that was what spouses did, and also because it distracted her long enough for him to steal the last strawberry from her plate.

Now he kisses a busty blonde girl in a short skirt, and her pouting lips open under his own, and he licks out and tastes wax and sugar, and doesn't stop to breathe for as long as he can. Erika moans, and Loke kisses her again, letting his eyes drift closed, and he doesn't think any more.

-xxx-

Lucy is beautiful in white, but Loke likes her short skirts much better. She laughs and hugs him and he doesn't attend the wedding because he has a date with four of his girlfriends tonight. But he wishes her luck and gives her a present and leaves as soon as possible, walking down the dark street with his hands tucked into his pockets because he broke up with all of his girlfriends two days ago. He watches the clouds as he walks. It's drizzling on and off. He wonders when Lucy will open his present.

He ends up waiting at the train station for seven hours, and the clouds have all blown away to reveal an endless universe, the moon large and bright white. It's not the only bright white thing in his vision. Loke turns.

She truly is beautiful in white. She's almost glowing, looking like a gift that the stars are going to take back any moment now. When they hug, she smells of flowers he can't identify. He flips her veil back over her head; her eyes are wet, all the makeup scrubbed off her face. The ring on her finger has been joined by another .

Loke sighs. "Just a little too late."

Lucy laughs, and shoves a duffel bag into his chest. "Hold this while I go get changed."

She returns several minutes later in a short blue skirt and a tight blue-and-white shirt. She's tied her hair up on one side, letting most of it fall loose, and has changed into a pair of long black boots. She looks like an entirely different person, much more real and down-to-earth but for the rings still on her finger.

Lucy sashays very deliberately over to Loke. She must have left the wedding dress in the bathroom. She holds up the ticket he gave her. "You should have tried something like this sooner. Maybe it would have worked."

Loke fingers the matching ticket in his pocket, and wonders what she thought of the letter that went with it. "I'm sorry, princess. I really am."

She smiles softly. "I know."

Then she's finally close enough, and she leans forward to tuck her ticket in his pocket to join the other one. She takes a step closer, her breasts flattening against his chest. Loke's hands fall to her hips.

"Lucy," he says, and she kisses him. Her breath is sweet and warm and he could swear he feels her heartbeat through her lips. He closes his eyes, tilts his head to the side, and deepens the kiss, and she lets him. He slides his hands up her sides, over her shoulders, down her arms, then closes his hands around hers and lifts them up even as he pulls back.

He lifts her left hand between them. The rings are small and elegant and beautiful and worth far more than Loke, and there are two of them and they fit together perfectly and he says, "I thought you didn't like my approach to dating."

Lucy's lips pout, and he _knows_ how sweet they taste now. "Two is not the same as eleven. Loke – my husband is a very understanding man."

The back of Loke's throat burns with bile. Lucy's fingers are loose in his grip. "I'm not. Call me a hypocrite, but I'm not understanding."

She pulls her hands free of his, scowling. "He has my money. He doesn't want much else right now; so long as I wear this ring, and neither does my father. Can you understand that much?"

"It's not the way it should be," he can't seem to help but say, but he's already drawing her back to him, wrapping himself around her and shivering at her warm skin.

Lucy's reply is some time coming, because her mouth is so soft and smooth and it doesn't taste like anything but warm delicate skin and Loke won't let it get away long enough for her to form any words. He feels far weaker in the knees than anyone with his amount of experience should feel. Lucy keeps making tiny little noises in the back of her throat.

Finally, she pushes him away. Her eyes are serious. "This is how it's going to have to be now," she says. "This is the way it is."

Loke should insist otherwise, but he's not an idiot. He nods once. "Okay."

And she smiles then, grins wide and open and takes three steps back to twirl under the stars, laughing out loud, giving a huge whoop of success, and Loke watches her with a smirk. After a minute he steps forward and catches her off her feet mid-spin, then sits down in the wet grass and kisses her until the train arrives, and then they get on and ride it far, far away.

The ring on her finger reminds them both that they will have to return.

For now, they don't care.


End file.
